Something I thought of - how about a couple of new pinned threads at the top of the board, one for SES leavers and one for childhood survivors? These could explain the site and how it works (and how it's evolved) and give them a safe place to post their first contact with the board.Then those of us ...

bonsai wrote:Please may I finish by simply saying that I am enormously grateful to this forum and to work done by Mike Gormez and Daffy in facilitating it. It has helped me hugely to come to terms with my past in St James and the SES.

Hi Daffy, I would also be very much in favour of a separate board for childhood survivors. If I were coming to this board for the first time now, a great deal of what is active on here would scare the living daylights out of me! The pinned thread at the top is now so long and complicated, and many o...

Hi MIA and welcome to the forum. There have been less threads and discussions lately about those of us who were sent to the St James and St Vedast. We have a unique perspective on the whole thing as we were sent there against our will and had no choice but to believe what we were told by the "r...

I began doing Mindfulness meditation about 3 months ago, as part of my attempts to manage my chronic pain. I did a free 11 week course at my local NHS Pain Clinic. At first, the meditation freaked me out a bit (particularly doing it in a group) but the tutors were aware of my history (it helped that...

Thank you! This forum has been invaluable to all of us, if only as a place where we can "sound off" (a bit like I did yesterday!). Please don't worry that your starting up this thread again has made things worse, it hasn't. I was having a bad day yesterday, and felt I needed to respond to ...

Hi Observer, Only just read your post, but thank you so much for your kind words. For some of us, life is a daily struggle still, even after all these years. What many people fail to understand about child abuse is that the "child" has to live the rest of their life forever changed. Some o...

Hallo landgirl, welcome to the forum, and congratulations for posting this. It obviously took a lot of courage to do it. I really feel for you when you outline how you are suffering so much psychologically. This is something that every SES survivor who posts on this forum will identify with, I'm sur...

Hi, Anyone who has read my recent thread "Has the SES ever been classified as a cult in the UK?" will know that I have been in contact with a small local magazine about them allowing a local branch of the SES/SOP to advertise their "philosophy" courses in their magazine. If you w...

Hi woodgreen, Thanks for your response. To answer your questions: I don't want to name the magazine on here, simply because I don't have their permission to do so, and so far they have been very open to a dialogue with me. They are a small, mostly volunteer run publication and it wouldn't be fair, a...

I wouldn't eat your words too quickly, Blissfully Sleeping, although I do think we're getting somewhere! Below is the latest email I received yesterday from the owner of the magazine (which is a very small, free magazine which prides itself on being ethically and socially responsible). Where I've re...

I can't quite believe it, but I actually got a reply! I post the relevant part of it below: "Thank you for getting in touch with us. We were not aware of any of this, and so we will look into your concerns immediately... I will get back to you in due course when we are clearer about our positio...